Luke Williams has become Swindon Town’s full-time head coach after signing a five-year contract with the League One club.

Williams, 35, was handed the reins on a temporary basis after Martin Ling resigned in December for health reasons.

Williams, who had previously coached Brighton’s reserves and under-21s, impressed the Robins enough initially to earn the job until the end of the season.

Martin Ling resigns as manager of Swindon Town due to health reasons

Read more

With Swindon having won four consecutive games in their division, the chairman Lee Power announced on Wednesday that the arrangement with Williams would become a longer-term one.

“Luke is an integral part of our project at Swindon Town,” Power said in a statement on the club’s official website.

“He is a fantastic coach – the best I’ve come across in 25 years of football. He has had to do it the hard way and has certainly served his apprenticeship.

“He finished as a player very early on due to injury and has put his whole life into coaching and improving players. He’s been an under-14s coach, a youth-team manager, an under-21s manager and an assistant manager and is now ready to be a head coach. He buys fully into the club’s model and is the ideal man to lead the club forward.

“The reason we have taken a bit of time over the appointment is that we both wanted to make sure that he was ready and comfortable to take on the other parts of the job that he hasn’t had to do up to this point – mainly picking the side and dealing with the press.

“If either of these jobs had detracted from the quality of his coaching, we would have looked at going down a different route but he has taken to the role in his usual calm, controlled manner and been totally unfazed.”